IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/19238.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Deflation Risk

Author

Listed:
  • Matthias Fleckenstein
  • Francis A. Longstaff
  • Hanno Lustig

Abstract

We study the nature of deflation risk by extracting the objective distribution of inflation from the market prices of inflation swaps and options. We find that the market expects inflation to average about 2.5 percent over the next 30 years. Despite this, the market places substantial probability weight on deflation scenarios in which prices decline by more than 10 to 20 percent over extended horizons. We find that the market prices the economic tail risk of de- flation very similarly to other types of tail risks such as catastrophic insurance losses. In contrast, inflation tail risk has only a relatively small premium. De- flation risk is also significantly linked to measures of financial tail risk such as swap spreads, corporate credit spreads, and the pricing of super senior tranches. These results indicate that systemic financial risk and deflation risk are closely related.

Suggested Citation

  • Matthias Fleckenstein & Francis A. Longstaff & Hanno Lustig, 2013. "Deflation Risk," NBER Working Papers 19238, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:19238
    Note: AP EFG ME
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w19238.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Giesecke, Kay & Longstaff, Francis A. & Schaefer, Stephen & Strebulaev, Ilya, 2011. "Corporate bond default risk: A 150-year perspective," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 102(2), pages 233-250.
    2. Longstaff, Francis A, 1995. "Option Pricing and the Martingale Restriction," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 8(4), pages 1091-1124.
    3. Michelle L. Barnes & Zvi Bodie & Robert K. Triest & J. Christina Wang, 2009. "TIPS scorecard: are TIPS accomplishing what they were supposed to accomplish?: can they be improved?," Public Policy Discussion Paper 09-8, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    4. Hamilton, James D, 1992. "Was the Deflation during the Great Depression Anticipated? Evidence from the Commodity Futures Market," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(1), pages 157-178, March.
    5. David Backus & Mikhail Chernov & Ian Martin, 2011. "Disasters Implied by Equity Index Options," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(6), pages 1969-2012, December.
    6. Refet S. Gürkaynak & Jonathan H. Wright, 2012. "Macroeconomics and the Term Structure," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 50(2), pages 331-367, June.
    7. Duffie, Darrell & Singleton, Kenneth J, 1997. "An Econometric Model of the Term Structure of Interest-Rate Swap Yields," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 52(4), pages 1287-1321, September.
    8. Robert C. Merton, 2005. "Theory of rational option pricing," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Sudipto Bhattacharya & George M Constantinides (ed.), Theory Of Valuation, chapter 8, pages 229-288, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    9. Chen, Ren-Raw & Liu, Bo & Cheng, Xiaolin, 2010. "Pricing the term structure of inflation risk premia: Theory and evidence from TIPS," Journal of Empirical Finance, Elsevier, vol. 17(4), pages 702-721, September.
    10. Milton Friedman & Anna J. Schwartz, 1963. "A Monetary History of the United States, 1867–1960," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number frie63-1.
    11. Ang, Andrew & Bekaert, Geert & Wei, Min, 2007. "Do macro variables, asset markets, or surveys forecast inflation better?," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(4), pages 1163-1212, May.
    12. Lane, Morton & Mahul, Olivier, 2008. "Catastrophe risk pricing : an empirical analysis," Policy Research Working Paper Series 4765, The World Bank.
    13. Robert J. Barro, 2006. "Rare Disasters and Asset Markets in the Twentieth Century," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(3), pages 823-866.
    14. Kay Giesecke & Francis A. Longstaff & Stephen Schaefer & Ilya Strebulaev, 2010. "Corporate Bond Default Risk: A 150-Year Perspective," NBER Working Papers 15848, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    15. Breeden, Douglas T & Litzenberger, Robert H, 1978. "Prices of State-contingent Claims Implicit in Option Prices," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 51(4), pages 621-651, October.
    16. LuisM. Viceira & John Y. Campbell, 2001. "Who Should Buy Long-Term Bonds?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(1), pages 99-127, March.
    17. French, Kenneth R., 1983. "A comparison of futures and forward prices," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(3), pages 311-342, November.
    18. Joost Driessen, 2005. "Is Default Event Risk Priced in Corporate Bonds?," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 18(1), pages 165-195.
    19. Robert Jarrow & Yildiray Yildirim, 2008. "Pricing Treasury Inflation Protected Securities and Related Derivatives using an HJM Model," World Scientific Book Chapters, in: Financial Derivatives Pricing Selected Works of Robert Jarrow, chapter 16, pages 349-370, World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd..
    20. Olesya V. Grishchenko & Jing-zhi Huang, 2012. "Inflation risk premium: evidence from the TIPS market," Finance and Economics Discussion Series 2012-06, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    21. Antje Berndt & Rohan Douglas & Darrell Duffie & Mark Ferguson, "undated". "Measuring Default Risk Premia from Default Swap Rates and EDFs," GSIA Working Papers 2006-E31, Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business.
    22. Xavier Gabaix, 2012. "Variable Rare Disasters: An Exactly Solved Framework for Ten Puzzles in Macro-Finance," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 127(2), pages 645-700.
    23. Jun Liu & Francis A. Longstaff & Ravit E. Mandell, 2006. "The Market Price of Risk in Interest Rate Swaps: The Roles of Default and Liquidity Risks," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 79(5), pages 2337-2360, September.
    24. Joseph Haubrich & George Pennacchi & Peter Ritchken, 2012. "Inflation Expectations, Real Rates, and Risk Premia: Evidence from Inflation Swaps," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 25(5), pages 1588-1629.
    25. repec:bla:jfinan:v:44:y:1989:i:1:p:205-09 is not listed on IDEAS
    26. Heston, Steven L, 1993. "A Closed-Form Solution for Options with Stochastic Volatility with Applications to Bond and Currency Options," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 6(2), pages 327-343.
    27. Jessica A. Wachter, 2013. "Can Time-Varying Risk of Rare Disasters Explain Aggregate Stock Market Volatility?," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 68(3), pages 987-1035, June.
    28. Pierre Collin‐Dufresne & Robert S. Goldstein, 2002. "Do Bonds Span the Fixed Income Markets? Theory and Evidence for Unspanned Stochastic Volatility," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 57(4), pages 1685-1730, August.
    29. Rietz, Thomas A., 1988. "The equity risk premium a solution," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(1), pages 117-131, July.
    30. Chernov, Mikhail & Mueller, Philippe, 2012. "The term structure of inflation expectations," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(2), pages 367-394.
    31. Francis A. Longstaff & Arvind Rajan, 2008. "An Empirical Analysis of the Pricing of Collateralized Debt Obligations," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 63(2), pages 529-563, April.
    32. Longstaff, Francis A. & Piazzesi, Monika, 2004. "Corporate earnings and the equity premium," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(3), pages 401-421, December.
    33. repec:bla:jfinan:v:59:y:2004:i:4:p:1481-1509 is not listed on IDEAS
    34. Mark J. Garmaise & Tobias J. Moskowitz, 2009. "Catastrophic Risk and Credit Markets," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 64(2), pages 657-707, April.
    35. repec:bla:jfinan:v:53:y:1998:i:2:p:499-547 is not listed on IDEAS
    36. Francois Gourio, 2008. "Disasters and Recoveries," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(2), pages 68-73, May.
    37. Banz, Rolf W & Miller, Merton H, 1978. "Prices for State-contingent Claims: Some Estimates and Applications," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 51(4), pages 653-672, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Michael Weber & Christian Dorion & Alexandre Jeanneret & Harjoat Bhamra, 2017. "Deflation, Sticky Leverage and Asset Prices," 2017 Meeting Papers 796, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    2. Francesco Bianchi & Leonardo Melosi, 2017. "Escaping the Great Recession," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(4), pages 1030-1058, April.
    3. Scharnagl, Michael & Stapf, Jelena, 2015. "Inflation, deflation, and uncertainty: What drives euro-area option-implied inflation expectations, and are they still anchored in the sovereign debt crisis?," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 48(C), pages 248-269.
    4. Christian Bauer & Sebastian Weber, 2016. "The Efficiency of Monetary Policy when Guiding Inflation Expectations," Research Papers in Economics 2016-14, University of Trier, Department of Economics.
    5. Hall, R.E., 2016. "Macroeconomics of Persistent Slumps," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 2131-2181, Elsevier.
    6. Scharnagl, Michael & Stapf, Jelena, 2014. "Inflation, deflation, and uncertainty: What drives euro area option-implied inflation expectations and are they still anchored in the sovereign debt crisis?," Discussion Papers 24/2014, Deutsche Bundesbank.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. François Gourio, 2013. "Credit Risk and Disaster Risk," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(3), pages 1-34, July.
    2. Peter Christoffersen & Du Du & Redouane Elkamhi, 2017. "Rare Disasters, Credit, and Option Market Puzzles," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(5), pages 1341-1364, May.
    3. Marfè, Roberto & Pénasse, Julien, 2024. "Measuring macroeconomic tail risk," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 156(C).
    4. Lim, Terence & Lo, Andrew W. & Merton, Robert C. & Scholes, Myron S., 2006. "The Derivatives Sourcebook," Foundations and Trends(R) in Finance, now publishers, vol. 1(5–6), pages 365-572, April.
    5. Grishchenko, Olesya V. & Vanden, Joel M. & Zhang, Jianing, 2016. "The informational content of the embedded deflation option in TIPS," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 1-26.
    6. Sang Byung Seo & Jessica A. Wachter, 2016. "Do Rare Events Explain CDX Tranche Spreads?," NBER Working Papers 22723, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    7. Roberto Marfè & Julien Penasse, 2016. "The Time-Varying Risk of Macroeconomic Disasters," Carlo Alberto Notebooks 463, Collegio Carlo Alberto.
    8. Priyank Gandhi & Hanno Lustig, 2010. "Size Anomalies in U.S. Bank Stock Returns: A Fiscal Explanation," NBER Working Papers 16553, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Xu Cheng & Winston Wei Dou & Zhipeng Liao, 2022. "Macro‐Finance Decoupling: Robust Evaluations of Macro Asset Pricing Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 90(2), pages 685-713, March.
    10. David Backus & Mikhail Chernov & Ian Martin, 2011. "Disasters Implied by Equity Index Options," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 66(6), pages 1969-2012, December.
    11. Qunzi Zhang, 2021. "One hundred years of rare disaster concerns and commodity prices," Journal of Futures Markets, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 41(12), pages 1891-1915, December.
    12. David Backus & Mikhail Chernov & Stanley Zin, 2014. "Sources of Entropy in Representative Agent Models," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 69(1), pages 51-99, February.
    13. D’Amico, Stefania & Kim, Don H. & Wei, Min, 2018. "Tips from TIPS: The Informational Content of Treasury Inflation-Protected Security Prices," Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 53(1), pages 395-436, February.
    14. Breach, Tomas & D’Amico, Stefania & Orphanides, Athanasios, 2020. "The term structure and inflation uncertainty," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 138(2), pages 388-414.
    15. Bakshi, Gurdip & Chabi-Yo, Fousseni, 2011. "Variance Bounds on the Permanent and Transitory Components of Stochastic Discount Factors," Working Paper Series 2011-11, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.
    16. Gimeno, Ricardo & Ibáñez, Alfredo, 2018. "The eurozone (expected) inflation: An option's eyes view," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 70-92.
    17. Juan Carlos Parra‐Alvarez & Olaf Posch & Andreas Schrimpf, 2022. "Peso problems in the estimation of the C‐CAPM," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 13(1), pages 259-313, January.
    18. Backus, David & Boyarchenko, Nina & Chernov, Mikhail, 2018. "Term structures of asset prices and returns," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 129(1), pages 1-23.
    19. Gourio, François, 2008. "Time-series predictability in the disaster model," Finance Research Letters, Elsevier, vol. 5(4), pages 191-203, December.
    20. Volker Wieland & Christos Koulovatianos, 2011. "Asset Pricing under Rational Learning about Rare Disasters," 2011 Meeting Papers 1417, Society for Economic Dynamics.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • E31 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Prices, Business Fluctuations, and Cycles - - - Price Level; Inflation; Deflation
    • G13 - Financial Economics - - General Financial Markets - - - Contingent Pricing; Futures Pricing

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:19238. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.